PICANDET – VALLOIS
Au jour d’Hui
Today, news is fairly good. We are in January 2018, Lucie Picandet is presenting her second solo exhibition at the Vallois gallery, following Idiose in 2016. These are the facts. But is it all certain? As mentioned, for this young artist who won the Emerige Revelations Grant in 2015, both her world and words are subject to specific rules and timelines, forcing us to reconsider everything: when, where and who are we.
This Au jour d’Hui (literally “the day we are”, from the old French hui meaning “today” itself) is the new episode of her fictional project Celui que je suis (literally “the one I am”) which gives the exhibition its title. It marks the present moment, Hui’s one (the artist), the exact founding time of its own downfall depicted in the three artworks opening the exhibition.
Let’s start from the beginning. Back in 2004, Lucie Picandet found a photographic postcard in a flea market in Paris that will set it all in motion (research, writing, creation) and therefore influence her works (embroideries, notebooks, sculptures, etc.). The stage is set.
Going back in time, she continues here her introspective and sensitive journey within her world-body: brain, eye, heart, intestinal flora… Every work is a step.
Her unconscious and universe are invented and unfolded before our eyes, transposed into shapes and words in an unbridled manner. We watch her become the train of her thoughts. Woolen threads running here and there are yet to be pulled and looked at closely. Then follow the recommended itinerary in the meanders of Hui, diving or else digging with it.
What is displayed makes one’s head spin: colors, materials, effects, subjects, flora and fauna. It’s whirling, circulating, pulsating and grinding all over. Lucie Picandet really knows the ways and means of giving life, energy and texture to what she puts on paper. Her new series of watercolors, bright and radiant, combine both writing and images, just like in her previous embroideries.